Community Benefits

By showing communities how to unlock the value in local forests, we are creating opportunities for rural Tanzanians to leverage forest resources as assets to pursue their own development aspirations. This is real empowerment, and makes our approach unique compared to that of many other development NGOs. Communities themselves decide how to spend their forest revenues, whilst we support this process by nurturing effective and transparent governance systems that promote community-wide engagement and benefit distribution. As a result, local income from timber has been used to improve social services and fund development projects with broad-based benefits for entire communities, such as:

259 expectant mothers subsidised with money towards maternal care

20 mattresses and 40 blankets for the village health center

Health insurance for 20 elderly people in the village

A house for the village nurse

A midwife's house

One primary school and two classrooms

A nursery school

92 school desks

323 uniforms for primary school students

Free school meals provided in one school

A furnished house for a primary school teacher, fitted with solar panels